Any girl wants to be well-groomed and beautiful. Fashionable haircut. New hair color, eyelash extensions or tight dress? All these ways to improve your appearance are good, but the first thing strangers pay attention to is their hands. Your hands should always be at their best, a good manicure helps with this. The trend of the season is the “moon” nail design. What is it? How to do it carefully, efficiently, and even at home? More on this later.

You will need:

History of origin

In fact, everything new is well forgotten old. The same story applies to manicure, which we now call “moon”. In the thirties of the twentieth century, the most fashionable young ladies already painted their nails this way.

The hole of the nail plate remained untouched, which is why the technique was called “lunar”. And all because no one wanted to paint their nails with a single-color coating back then; it was considered bad manners.

Christian Dior gave this design a second wind. This Fashion House made a collection in which models came out with nails drawn with holes. Thus, many top stylists have picked up this trend and successfully brought it to the masses. At the moment, “lunar” is one of the most trendy manicures.

Types of moon manicure

There are two ways to draw a moon manicure:

Classic moon manicure.

To create such a manicure, you need to draw a hole in the direction from the natural hole of the nail. It looks very unusual. The downside is that this design visually makes the nails a little shorter.

Eclipse.

When performing this technique, you draw a hole along a natural contour; the base of the hole can be slightly raised. This type of design greatly lengthens the nail plate.

With sticker

The easiest way to draw a “moon manicure” design for yourself is suitable for beginners and those who do not have a lot of time.

In order to make an original and bright lunar design, you need to purchase:

• Varnishes of the colors with which you will cover the nail;
• Stickers;
• Top coating.

Manicure with brush

It is much more difficult to draw with a brush; precision and accuracy are needed, therefore, we recommend this method for craftsmen and experts on how to do a lunar manicure using stickers. For beginners, the method described below will be a little more difficult than expected.

Necessary equipment:

• A couple of varnishes in contrasting colors;
• Design brush;
• Top coating.

Performance

1. We do a manicure, after which we cover the nail with the first varnish;
2. Using a brush, very carefully draw holes at the base of the nail;
3. Cover with top coat.

Polka dot manicure

Are you bored with your regular moon manicure? Then this point of our article is especially for you. Polka dots are one of the easiest designs that you can make yourself at home.

Necessary equipment:

• Varnishes of contrasting colors;
• Design brush;
• Top coating.

Performance

1. As usual, we give ourselves a flawless manicure, preparing our nails for working on them;
2. We cover the nail plate with the first varnish, which will be the base;
3. We apply stickers, separating the hole for ourselves;
4. We paint this same hole with varnish of a different color;
5. Remove the sticker;
6. We take the same varnish that we used to paint the hole and put dots on the nail plate, going around the hole.
7. The number of dots and their size is up to your taste;
8. Cover with top.

Moon manicure is a real jewel on your nails, elegance and chic in one bottle. Such a manicure, like nothing else, decorates the hands and attracts attention to them, so it is important that it is done, if not flawlessly, then close to it.

In the middle of the last century, lunar manicure was a favorite design option for Hollywood divas: in combination with almond-shaped nails, it looked simply mesmerizing and visually lengthened the shape of the nail. In the last decade, this fashion was brought back by the extravagant Dita Von Teese, and now such a manicure is available to any woman, regardless of the shape of her nails.

Most women go to a salon for a lunar manicure, thinking that they themselves will not be able to create such beauty on their nails. In fact, everything is not as complicated as it might seem at first glance, and after several tests you can get a completely acceptable result.

Having several varnishes, perhaps glitter, and some other nail art tools in your bins, you can try to realize your favorite design yourself. Below are several options and tips on how to do a moon manicure at home.

By changing colors and alternating polish textures, you can create a new manicure every time without changing anything in the overall scheme! Having mastered at least one of the methods below, you can get rid of thoughts for a long time about how to do your next manicure - of course, lunar, because this is a huge scope for creativity!

The easiest way to highlight a hole on a nail is to use a special stencil with a rounded edge. A stencil for a French manicure is perfect for this purpose, only in this case it should be glued not to the protruding edge of the nail, but to the hole near the cuticle.

However, it is best to use not a special stencil, but a means at hand - corners for photo albums. It just so happens that they are ideal for outlining the hole: they are made of thinner paper than special stencils, under which varnish can flow during the painting process.

You can buy such stencils in art departments, as well as in stores selling handicrafts and scrapbooking. If there are no points of sale of such products nearby, but you want to get a manicure done right now, then you can try to make stencils yourself. It is best to use electrical tape for this - it is more flexible than tape, does not leave traces of glue on the nails and generally sticks on as easily as it can be removed later, it is easy to work with. To make a stencil, you need to cut off pieces of electrical tape and trim one side with nail scissors so that a semicircle emerges - it is most convenient to do this diagonally.

You don’t need to remove the stencil right away, but when the varnish has dried a little, then the strip will not pull the varnish along with it and the line will be smooth and neat.

Stamping

Here you will need everything you need for stamping: a stamp, plates with a pattern and thick varnish. For this version of the lunar manicure, it is better to choose contrasting colors so that the pattern looks bright and it is clear that the hole is highlighted by a pattern or, conversely, by its absence.

There are 2 ways to do stamping to get a lunar manicure: take plates with a pattern that matches the shape of the hole - then it will be highlighted, or limit yourself to any plate with a complex pattern. The second option, of course, is simpler - firstly, such plates are easier to find, and secondly, doing a manicure is very simple: you just need to transfer the design from the stamp to the nail, stepping back slightly from the edge, forming a hole.

However, the option with a pattern on the hole itself looks better and more elegant, but you will have to try hard and, most likely, will not do without correction of the manicure, because the varnish will get on the cuticle and the skin around the nail.

1. The stamping varnish must be thick and single-layer, because it will be impossible to make a second layer of the design.
2. To make the manicure more vibrant, the design can be painted using varnishes with a thin brush, but this is filigree and painstaking work.
3. You must use a fixative on top, but only after the drawing has completely dried.

Video - Moonlight manicure by hand

Draw by hand

This is both simple and difficult, and the main difficulty is to do everything smoothly and accurately. The uneven, trembling line of the hole will be immediately noticeable, and this is not the kind of attention you want to attract to your hands.

There are a few things to consider:

1. It is better to outline the hole from above, applying varnish over the base color to the top of the nail - in other words, you do not need to draw the hole itself, filling it with varnish, this will be noticeable and look clumsy.
2. To make drawing easier, you can first use a thin brush - only to outline the border of the hole. After the border has been drawn, you can use a regular varnish brush to cover the nail from the border to the top.
3. To minimize costs, it is better to use single-layer varnishes that provide dense coverage from the first layer. Then you won’t have to paint your bow twice, and the manicure will only benefit from this: fewer layers means the varnish dries faster and the manicure is more durable.

Make a stretch with glitter

A very festive, elegant version of a glitter manicure, for which you can use both shiny varnish and loose glitter. Making such a manicure is much easier than using regular varnishes - you don’t have to outline the hole, you just need to mark it with sparkles.

How to do a stretch a la moon manicure:

• dip the brush in glitter and shake off excess - there should not be an abundance of sparkles on the brush;
• place the brush perpendicular to the nail on the very edge of the hole, leaving most of the glitter there;
• Using an almost dry brush, stretch the glitter from the hole to the middle of the nail so that the glitter becomes smaller the further it is from the hole.

This is all really not difficult, but if you wish and have some imagination, you can quickly create a very beautiful manicure: imitate flower petals with sparkles, take multi-colored glitter, do a double manicure using sparkles of different colors on different fingers. After the glitter has dried, be sure to cover your nails with a sealing coat - this will provide an even better look.

Use foil for manicure

Another opportunity to decorate your nails is to take foil of any color and combine it with polish, including a moon design. In this case, the foil can be any manicure material, you just need to choose the right varnish: it must be dense enough to cover the foil, and it will have to be applied manually, so this option is for those who have already mastered the “manual method” of outlining the hole.

This manicure looks very elegant, it literally shines and really attracts attention to the hands. The most popular combinations are gold with red or black, silver with black, although you can, of course, use any other colors.

Do a moon manicure in reverse

An option for the laziest and for those who do not like to use design tools, but were unable to draw the hole manually. Moon manicure on the contrary, or Ruffian, looks no less interesting, and it is much easier to draw!

In this case, there is no need to outline the hole - it’s like a mirror image of the jacket, only on the other side of the nail. After practicing on a couple of nails, you can learn how to do this type of design beautifully and evenly, not to mention the fact that you can also use foil or glitter here.

Ruffian is an excellent alternative to moon manicure, just as elegant and provocative, and at the same time much simpler to perform.